An Important Lesson

“Throwers” relish clearing out and will empty a house quickly; “keepers” want to preserve special things as well as memories, and will linger over the process. People who balance these attributes have come to the realization that the most valuable thing in a house is the life that has been lived there. Read more about how “keepers” and “throwers” work together to downsize and declutter.

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We seem to have a need to quantify everything. Is this a particularly American trait or is it something that appeals to certain personality traits? I wonder how many people are attracted to this idea? (That question, in itself, is a need to quantify!)

Sometimes quantifying works: People who are successful at losing weight often tract their food amounts and athletes who want to improve their performance keep logs and then try to best their own record. Sometimes it doesn’t work. The national controversy with testing school children has led many to conclude that children are being deprived of learning self-motivation, of time to explore, of just being children.

Does quantifying work for decluttering? The 80/20 rule, another way of quantifying, states that we use about 20 percent of our stuff 80 percent of the time. If that’s true, which I’m sure it is, perhaps some of these suggestions will be helpful.

Joshua Becker if his book The More of Less: Finding The Life You Want Under Everything You Own suggests that we get rid of 50 percent of what we own, to try to live with only half of what we have now. He asks “Am I buying too much stuff because deep down I think it will insulate me from the harms of the world?” We need to embrace security without over accumulating.

Another way to quantify our downsizing is the 40 Bags in 40 Days decluttering challenge. The writer of the blog White House, Black Shutters offers tips on how to do this and lists the rules (there really aren’t any) for anyone who wants to accept the challenge.

Rather than getting rid of stuff as these authors have done, many people have vowed not to buy more stuff. Just search for “no shopping blogs” and you will find many people who have documented a year in their lives when they chose to not buy any new items. For some, after seeing how much space they had and how easy it was to live with less, it became a permanent way of life.

In his book Joshua Becker writes about a shorter challenge: a woman named Courtney created a personal experiment called Project 333 where for 3 months she allowed herself only 33 items of clothing (not including underwear and sleepwear).

Dave Bruno writes that “downsizing not only would help take care of what I’d accumulated over the years…it was also going to be my way forward.”

Are we ready to move forward? That always involves change and this first week in July is Take Charge of Change Week. Let’s take charge of change in our lives. What can we get rid of?